L/ (y 



^ 




ADDRESS 







^ 



DEUVKnEI) AT TIIK 



UNIYEltSlTY OF rENNSYLYANIA. 



THE SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI, 



)X Till'. OIVASIOX OF THEIR 



ANNUAL CELKr.KATION. NOVEMBER 13tli, ISol. 



P.Y HENRY U. (ilLriN. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

KING k BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 9 SANSOM STKEET. 

1851. 



Of„i\ 



)4 






^o/' ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



TJNIYERSITY OF PENNSYLYANIA, 



THE SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI, 



ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR 



ANNUAL CELEBRATION, NOVEMBER 13th, 1851. 



BY HENRY D. UlLPIN. 



'PHILADELPHIA: 
KING & BAIRD, PKINTEK3, No. 9 SANSOM STREET. 




V / ft V 



MBW vou rasL. LiM« 

in 






CORRESPONDENCE. 



University of Pennsylvania, 

Philndeliihia, Noi'eviher 21sf., 1851. 
Dear Sir: 

At a Special Meeting of the Board of Managers of the Society of the Alumni, 
held in the College Hall, on the 20th inst., we were appointed a Committee to 
tender you the thanks of the Society, for the eloquent and instructive Oration 
delivered by you on the 13th inst., and to request a copy of the same for publication. 

In communicating this action of the Board, permit us to express the hope that 
you will accede to their request. 

We remain very respectfully yours, 

Horatio G. Jones, Jr., 
Clark Hare, 
William H. Crabbe, 
John B. Gest, 
Caldwell K. Biddle. 

To THE Hon. Henev D. Gilpin. 



Philadelphia, November 22d, 1851. 

Gentlemen: 

In compliance with your request, I transmit to you, the Address delivered before 
the Society of the Alumni on the 13th instant. Allow me to take this occasion to 
express the real gratification afforded me, by being enabled to participate, in a 
manner so agreeable to myself, in the proceedings of a Society to which I am 
attached by many pleasing recollections. 

Very respectfully yours, 

H. D. Gilpin. 

To Messrs. Horatio G. Jones, Jr., Clark Hare, WilliaAi H. Crabbe, 

John B. Gest, and Caldwell K. Biddle, Committee. 



OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI, 

ELECTED NOVEMBER 13, 18S1. 



President. 
Henry Reed, LL. D. 



Vice Presidents. 



Isaac Hats, M. D. 
Hon. Henry D. Gilpin, 



Hon. Geor(!e Sharswood, 
Charles E. Lex. 



Corresponding Secretary. 
James R. Ludlow* 

Recording Secretary. 
John M. Collins, 

No, 128 Walnut Street. 

Treasiirer, 
Horatio G, Jones, Jr., 

No. 47 South Fifth Street. 



MANAGERS, 



Hon. John M. Read, 
Joseph Carson, M. D., 
Rev. John W. Faircs, 
John William Wallace, 
Hon. J. L Clark Hare, 
John Neill, M. D., 
Henry D. Gregory, 
J. L. Ludlow, M. D., 
S. Keen Ashton, M. D., 
David J. Johnson, M. D. 



John B. Gest, 
William H. Crabbe, 
Samuel Wetherill, 
Caldwell K. Riddle, 
William Rotch Wister, 
A. Hewson, M.D., 
G. H. Robinett, M. D., 
J. S. Z. Sellers, M. D., 
A. C. Durbin, 
A. G. Baker. 



ADDRESS. 

Associates ! Alumni op the University op Pennsylvania : 

We meet in these venerated halls to recall the 
cherished associations of our youthful days. We are 
pleased to acknowledge, with grateful recollection, a 
debt here first incurred, which subsequent experience 
has served only to augment. We come to bear our 
testimony to the infinite usefulness of that wider 
scope of instruction in science, in letters, and in 
moral and intellectual cultivation, which we gained 
in the days here passed. We desire to offer, if it 
be of value, our aid in sustaining and promoting 
the welfare and fame of an Institution, to which 
we are bound by a sympathy never extinguished 
in a generous heart. The air around us breathes 
tranquillity and peace. The associations of the 
place, the scene, and the object of our assemblage, 
excite emotions and revive remembrances tinctured 
by none of those shadows which the hopes, the fears, 
the chances, and the toils attendant upon the race 
of life we have been obliged to run, may have cast 
upon our pathway. We have been widely separated 
by accident and necessity, and the scarce perceptible 
influences of passing years. Our pursuits have di- 
verged farther and farther into the ever-varying 



8 ADDKESS. 

channels, whither the prospects of fortune and fame 
have led us ; or the allurements of passion and 
ambition ; or the current of fortune, good or bad, 
that could not be, or has not been, resisted. But to 
this spot we come — are pleased and happy to come 
— w^ith a spirit as unworldly as that in which the 
chosen people came trooping, year by year, to their 
holy mountain, and to the brook that flowed fast 
by the oracle of God. Nothing allures us but the 
love of letters. No associations are revived but those 
of rivalry and toil in the search of knowledge and 
truth. Tully, in the most busy periods of his active 
life — when apparently absorbed by the labors of that 
forum, to which he was forever called by those who 
believed that fortune, and even life, were to be 
rescued from every peril by the magic of his tongue; 
when engrossed by the ceaseless duties of the 
highest public stations, and annoyed with the rival- 
ries of political intrigue — twice revisited the scenes, 
far distant from Eome, where in youth he had 
studied the lessons that prepared his bright career. 
Twice did he seek, with a fond heart, the little isle 
of Khodes, a rock scarce seen in the blue waters 
of the Mediterranean, but of world-wide fame from 
the schools in which his own unrivalled eloquence 
was trained. Twice did he repair to Athens, where 
he had imbibed the spirit of that pure philosophy 
which he transplanted and made to flourish in the 
ruder soil of imperious Rome — where he had revolved. 



ADDRESS. y 

in groves and porches once trodden by Plato, those 
thoughts that taught him there was nothing so 
strongly to he coveted as active virtue and deserved 
esteem, for which suffering, and exile, and death 
were to be cheerfully encountered — where, with an 
eye that seemed almost to have caught some rays 
of a diviner light, soon to be revealed, he pierced 
the darkness that shrouded the life beyond the grave; 
and recognized, with confident belief, the unity, the 
design, the benevolence, and the providence of God, 
"by whom and from whom all things were." As 
Tully sought and lingered at those scenes ; and in 
his letters and his converse recurred to them as 
objects which he "deeply loved;" so do we come 
hither, in the strong assurance that we can indulge 
no emotions more natural and just than those which 
fill the heart, when they who have been long sepa- 
rated, meet voluntarily on the spot, where, in by-gone 
days, they prepared themselves for the struggle and 
duties of life. 

To say that I am honored in being chosen to 
express these feelings, for those who love to remember 
they were nurtured in these halls, is to do less than 
justice to the spirit with which I have come to the 
performance of my pleasing duty. I am carried back 
to the day when, surrounded by my young com- 
panions, I here bade adieu, not without sorrow, to 
those who had led us, not more as guides than 
friends, to the opening portals of busy life. Un- 



10 ADDRESS. 

spotted are their names, and to us long memorable! 
Alas, not one of them now remains again to meet 
me here, again to receive the tribute of my unchanged 
respect. I remember, too, how, after years of absence 
had rolled by, I came here once more, summoned and 
welcomed by another youthful band, struggling with 
the same enthusiasm, in the same arena, for the same 
honorable prize. But now I come not, as on those 
occasions — not as one participating in collegiate strug- 
gles, or seeking to impart to those yet engaged in 
them, something of my own subsequent experience 
and reflection ; I come to meet those who before me, 
as my companions, and in later days, here entered 
on the search for truth; and for whom, as much as 
for myself, I am to interpret those thoughts, which, 
as they rapidly retrace the retrospect of our lives, 
lead us to acknowledge influences here planted, and 
principles here formed, that, as they may have been 
followed or neglected, have since largely affected us, 
for evil or for good. 

If it be to the severer toil of maturer years, that 
we must owe perfected knowledge in that line of 
labor, of science, or of thought, to which inclination 
or necessity may have drawn us ; yet who will deny 
that, from the abundant fountain of various and 
diversified instruction, which he owes to his days 
of collegiate study, he has found that streams of 
information and acquirement have flowed, whose in- 
fluence has not been less useful and refreshing, 



ADDRESS. 11 

because apparently less necessary and direct? For 
myself, I look back in vain for a single branch of 
intellectual inquiry, that I can now desire to have 
dispensed with. After many years devoted to one 
profession, I come forward, a willing witness to the 
blended happiness and utility conferred on all suc- 
ceeding life, by those who have directed the opening 
mind to all the channels of moral and intellectual 
exertion. 

Do not let us think it were better to limit or 
contract them ? "With what could we wisely dis- 
pense ? What avenue of the young heart, opening 
to receive its store of intellectual truth, would we 
heedlessly close in the presumptuous anticipation 
that it will not minister to its future usefulness or 
happiness ? Do we think that it possesses not capa- 
city to receive it? Believe me, it absorbs with 
delight all the streams of knowledge, as the earth 
asks for and absorbs the genial rain. It is this 
that it pants for. It is alive with anxious search- 
ings for it. Glancing, in its young eagerness, from 
heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, it seeks 
to turn to shape all the things that are yet unknown 
to it, and unwise were we, rudely to thwart its 
ardent aspirations. 

There is no one science — there is no one range of 
inquiry or of thought — that does not aid and illus- 
trate every other. I ask you to remember that the 
names made most illustrious by the unerring judgment 



12 ADDRESS. 

of time, for contributions the most brilliant in one 
branch of science or of art, belong to those who have 
ranged over the whole circle of knowledge, and loved 
to store up rich treasures of observation, apparently 
the most foreign to those studies which have seemed 
to engross their exclusive devotion. 

Do you think that the severest labors of scientific 
research cannot be aided by voluntary wanderings into 
the airy regions of fancy, and the expanded field of 
reflections and duties, moral and divine ? Look at 
that illustrious sage, who, standing not merely un- 
rivalled, but almost alone in the long vista of many 
centuries — without predecessors to guide him — with 
few facilities of communication — with no aids, now so 
various and abundant — yet has made and recorded 
investigations so patient, minute, diversified and ex- 
tensive in natural history, in astronomy, in mechanics, 
in anatomy, in meteorology — nay, into the whole 
field of practical, physical inquiry, that they might 
well seem to have formed the sole object of his study — 
to have required and exhausted every moment of his 
occupation. But was it so? Far from it. He pored 
over, with a love no less intense, the creations of ima- 
gination ; he studied with his whole heart the fabled 
pictures of human passion^ — the wrath of the son of 
Peleus, or the woes of the line of Pelops — as if his 
inclinations and his taste had never dwelt on things 
more practical or true than such as float before a 
poet's eye. Will you say that the Stagyrite sounded 



ADDRESS. 13 

less profoundly the depths of science, abstract or ex- 
perimental, because his mind gathered new inspiration 
from the glowing pictures of Homer and Euripides ? 

Who is it that, beyond all intellects that the world 
has witnessed, developed, through the application of a 
severe and abstruse anal3^sis, the grandest secrets of 
the universe ? Whose life, whose thoughts, whose 
studies, and whose ambition, all seemed devoted, with 
undivided energy of purpose and inclination, to prob- 
lems the most difficult in mathematical science — to 
researches the most exclusively directed to the laws of 
physical nature ? Need I name the illustrious Newton ? 
Yet at the very time when that great mind was 
evolving, by means so purely abstract and scientific, 
the truths which his immortal Principia disclosed, it 
was engaged, with a zeal scarcely less ardent, in study- 
ing, vindicating, and explaining various doctrines of 
revealed religion. I allude not to that summary, so 
eloquent and sublime, with which, as he closes his 
great work of scientific analysis, he anxiously records, 
in language ever memorable, his humble and confident 
recognition of the existence, attributes and power of 
the Supreme God, made apparent to us by the wisdom 
and excellence of all he had contrived ; whom — and I 
use his own language — we admire for his perfections, 
and, as his servants, reverence and adore. But I refer 
to those essays in which he brought together his erudi- 
tion, argument, piety and faith, to explain the mys- 



14 ADDRESS. 

teries of Hebrew prophecy, and to cast their light on 
the records of Christian revelation. 

Will you say then, that to train the mind to experi- 
ment and analysis ; to fit it most surely for the bril- 
liant discoveries or useful application of science; it 
were better to withdraw it from the dazzling attrac- 
tions of imagination, and to turn it aside from studies 
which are conversant, not with external nature and 
its laws, but with the silent workings and judgments 
of the reason and the heart ? How can I answer you 
so conclusively as by examples such as these ? 

Again. Do you think that the active duties of busy 
life, in stations humble or distinguished, are best per- 
formed by him who wanders not into the paths of 
intellectual occupation ? Man's history and expe- 
rience establish the reverse. It was by the power 
and spirit of his poetry, which through life he never 
ceased to cultivate, that Solon of all Athenian law- 
givers the most practical and popular, first won and 
secured the notice and confidence of his country. 
Through that period, by far the most important in 
British history, in which those influences were deve- 
loped and established that have afiected, beyond all 
others of modern times, the destiuy, the progress, and 
the social and political institutions of our race, what 
mind and pen discussed, with unequalled vigor and 
eloquence, the rights and duties of the ruler and the 
citizen ; through nineteen years, vindicated, in every 



ADDRESS. 15 

aspect that changing events and times demanded, the 
cause of civil and rehgious freedom ; tore aside the 
veil, with a fearless hand, from monarchical and 
ecclesiastical corruption and social dissoluteness ; 
upheld, through that long struggle, with an energy 
that never flagged and resources of thought, learning, 
intrepidity, enthusiasm, eloquence and lofty and 
conscious virtue never elsewhere combined, represen- 
tative government, diffused and enlightened education, 
freedom of discussion and the press, the responsibility 
of the magistrate to the people, and the principles, 
in society and government, that are essential for the 
protection of the rights and liberty of men ? They 
were the mind and |)en of him, who also from these 
labors, seemingly so worldly, soared on seraph wings, 
and claimed nor was refused his place upon the 
Muse's hill, side by side with blind Moeonides and 
the Mantuan bard. 

Among statesmen and patriots he, to whom, in our 
own history, we assign with common assent, the praise 
of untiring and useful attention to public duty ; who 
for half a century constantly devoted to it his intellect 
and his time ; whose character and conduct were in 
all things singularly practical and industrious ; is the 
sagacious philosopher who, amid various speculation 
and experiment in the regions of science, disclosed to 
us the phienomena of that subtle fluid which has since 
become the most wonderful of physical agents. 

In these our days and in this our land, which 



16 ADDRESS. 



derives prosperity and progress — perhaps beyond all 
other causes — from those channels and ties which 
lessen the toils as they promote the intercourse of 
men, little do we pause to think to whom we owe the 
invention, so simple yet so complete, which raises over 
lofty hills and carries into the deepest valleys, the 
stream which yields to and obeys the dictates of 
science, in seeming opposition to the laws of nature. 
Doubtless we believe the curious invention to be the 
product of an intellect devoted to applications of me- 
chanic skill. But it is not so. As the traveller in 
Italy wanders through galleries that exhibit the gifted 
efforts of the painter's art ; as he seeks in palaces, and 
churches, and convents, those pictures which bring 
before his eye features of more than human beauty, 
and portray incidents and scenes of interest the most 
intense; he pauses over one which delineates the 
event, most memorable in the history of our race, 
when the divine Saviour, meekly awaiting his cruel 
fate, assembles his disciples around him, and, as he 
soothes with inspiring promises their sad forebodings, 
and as he allows with heavenly tenderness the youth- 
ful apostle whom he loved to rest upon his bosom, bids 
them to repeat the sacred festival in remembrance of 
him. Little does he who gazes on that picture, think 
that the creative genius which has made this scene to 
exist before his eyes, was constantly engaged in acts 
and improvements of practical utility, and, among 
them, sagaciously contrived the plan which has made 



ADDRESS. 17 

the mountain torrent and the sluggish stream easy and 
subservient avenues of commerce. 

He who stands in that edifice the most glorious and 
vast that religion — among the unnumbered structures 
which it has spread through every age and country 
— has ever devoted to the object of its adoration, 
cannot fail to have wondered at the mechanic skill 
which has reared it with such unerring accuracy of 
architectural precision; but does he think that the 
mind which arranged and combined a mechanism so 
intricate, that the hand which gave to the artificer 
plans so minute, were those of one to whose soaring 
imagination we owe conceptions that seem not to 
possess an element of worldly study ? He who dared 
to raise high into the air that massive dome, in the 
confidence of mathematical exactness, was he who also 
could conceive and embody in marble which almost 
lives, the form and features that express the inspira- 
tion and reverence of him to whom were delivered, 
amid the thunders of Sinai, the recorded mandates of 
Jehovah. 

Ah, no ! believe me, practical usefulness and energy 
have never been, can never be, thwarted or diminished 
by the cultivation of genius or taste ; by giving free 
scope to the widest range of intellectual pursuit ; by 
opening every avenue through which thought, however 
various, shall bring its treasures into the recesses of the 
heart. The practical and the ideal are not antago- 
nists. They minister the one to the other. In the 



18 ADDRESS. 

composition of our wonderful nature, the great Creator 
has given us the blended faculties to cultivate, profit 
bj, and enjoy them both. Do not let us separate 
them. Let it rather be our aim — for ourselves through 
life, for those cast upon us for guidance or assistance — 
to further our own and their usefulness ; to foster and 
augment their and our own happiness, by seeking, as 
much as may be, to unite with practical — nay, if you 
will, with worldly skill and success, the deep thoughts 
which soothe, and elevate, and sink into the heart, 
and even those brighter sentiments which play around 
and cheer it. 

Do you tell me that in so doing, we divide the energy 
and distract the purposes and aims of future life, which 
we should seek rather to concentrate ? If experience 
can answer you, the pregnant examples I have given 
afford a conclusive reply. But were it otherwise, with 
what justice do we narrow intellectual inquiry, pre- 
sumptuously assume to limit its field, and mark out in 
advance a course which it shall of necessity pursue ? 
With the ample page of knowledge unrolled before it, 
the eye of intelligence best singles out the object of its 
devotion; nor can we foresee through what channels of 
exertion it will most contribute to its own enjoyment, 
or best perform its part in the business and duties of 
the world. How often in the rash endeavor may 
generous energy be repressed, and the genial current 
of the soul be frozen! How often has it thus been 
forced to struggle for and attain, with late success, the 



ADDRESS. 19 

chosen objects of early aspiration ! You may contract 
the sphere of youthful research ; you may shut out the 
rays which, with inconsiderate presumption, you think 
can impart neither radiance nor warmth ; but are you 
well assured that, in so doing, the current has not been 
turned awry, and success and perhaps happiness un- 
wisely thwarted, if not altogether destroyed ? 

I look around me, and I seek in vain to discover 
that branch of knowledge in ignorance of which we 
could desire to have entered on the theatre of life. 
Surely we cannot say those hours were misspent which 
have unlocked for us the stores of genius or knowl- 
edge, hidden in other languages than our own. Is it 
possible that taste can be better formed than from 
models which all ages have united to approve ? Is not 
the early mind well imbued with philosophy and moral 
truths, so simple and direct, as those which have come 
down to us from the time-honored sages of Greece and 
Rome, and with a love of those principles of social and 
political freedom that breathe through all the pages of 
their history ? Can the imagination and the heart be 
better warmed and inspired, at the period of their 
greatest freshness and susceptibility, than by examples 
of virtue, in public and domestic life, which the con- 
current judgment of centuries has held forth as most 
worthy of imitation? Though future occupation may 
have made it needless to retain a minute knowledge of 
the languages of antiquity, yet I venture to affirm that 
there exists not one who remembers how they first 



20 ADDRESS. 

awakened his tastes, his moral impulses, his love of 
freedom and his admiration of actions marked by en- 
nobling virtues, that will not acknowledge and rejoice 
that he imbibed them, in youth, at the shrine of clas- 
sical antiquity — that shrine upon which genius, in 
nearly every form, has cast its abundant offering. 
Weak and vain were the effort to depreciate or deny 
the contributions, so varied and so rich, which suc- 
ceeding ages have added to the stores of genius, of 
knowledge and of virtue; yet three thousand years 
still leave the divine tale of Troy, in the general judg- 
mentof cultivated intelligence, and in the spontaneous 
sentiment of those most keenly alive to poetic beauty, 
without a rival in the varied and matchless excellences 
of the poet's art. When you have studied with dehght 
the breathing forms of dignity or grace, which the 
chisel of Michael Angelo or Canova has created from 
the cold and senseless marble, you are content, in proof 
of your strongest admiration, to compare them, in 
generous rivalry, with fragments rescued from the ruins 
of the Acropolis, or dug from beneath the buried palaces 
of Rome. In vain, through the long ages that have 
glided by since sage philosophy descended to the low 
roofed house of Socrates, do we seek for lessons of 
thoughtful virtue more pure, ennobling or cheering 
than those he taught, among all that uninspired intel- 
ligence has, with brightest aims, imparted to mankind ; 
and even now, as in the days of TuUy, the truths most 
needed in the intercourse of men can find a stronger 



ADDRESS. 21 

sanction from his name. When in annals more or less 
remote, and even in these our own eventful times, we 
behold the struggle to wrest from the power of hoary 
despotism the inherent rights of men, and with them 
to gain the just and sole security for their permanent 
welfare, can we forget the glorious efforts for the same 
great ends which enchained our earliest sympathies, 
confirmed our judgments, and fixed our own future 
purposes, as we traced them, with eager hopes, through 
the varied history of those republics which first pro- 
claimed them and contended for them, as the basis of 
political institutions. And throughout life, in pondering 
on the characters of men, and recalling those deeds 
which have best exhibited their patriotism, their 
courage, or their disinterestedness — which have best 
illustrated the virtues most frequently required by 
social life, or best serve as beacons to point out the 
vices and follies from which we should protect it — do 
not those names rise spontaneously to our memory, 
which have been preserved in the records of Grecian 
and Roman story ? With them we compare the names 
and actions of those most revered in our own history; 
and we desire no better proof of their title to the 
favoring judgment of their country, than that they 
may justly rank with them. Do I err in believing 
that these are influences which will be acknowledged, 
without dissent, by all who recur to those studies of 
youth which were devoted to the literature of Greece 
and Rome? Do I err in saying that they are influences 



22 ADDRESS. 

on subsequent life, among those to be most anxiously 
coveted and secured? 

Will you withdraw from the inquiries of the student 
the wide expanse of scientific investigation, and force 
him to confine them within some limited sphere which 
you deem more appropriate to his future pursuits ? I 
will not say to you, in reply, that it is scarcely possi- 
ble but that, in the accidents of life, every branch of 
science may prove to be of practical utility; for it is 
not this circumstance that alone, or even mainly, im- 
parts to such studies their principal value. But I do 
say to you, that he who has to pass through life, 
where, at every step, the truths of physical nature 
are forced upon his notice, without having his mind 
instructed upon their main outlines, principles and 
relations — upon the leading facts which elucidate and 
the great laws which regulate them — has indeed made 
himself to wander, voluntarily blindfold, along a path 
which he might have found " so smooth, so green, 
so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on 
every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
charming." He rudely casts from himself pleasures 
that Nature gladly offers him; he closes up springing 
fountains of pure and grateful emotions; he blunts 
the keenness of intellect and narrows the scope of 
useful illustration ; and while he wraps himself in the 
vain belief that energy has been strengthened and 
success attained, by singleness of purpose and of aim, 



ADDRESS. 23 

he has but deprived himself of resources that would 
have augmented both. 

Early and accurately to have learned the great 
truths which pervade the wide circle of the sciences, 
is to start upon the race of life lightened of a thou- 
sand errors and illusions that could hardly fail to 
check its progress, and beckoned onward by pros- 
pects, on every side, that cheer and accelerate it. 
The observation of external nature is, to some degree, 
necessarily forced upon us all. He cannot shut it 
out who chooses to devote himself to the labors of the 
forum, the restless pursuits of commerce, the patient 
toils of agriculture, or the intricacies of mechanic art ; 
nor he who bears his ministering aid to alleviate 
suffering or to ward off death; nor he who, in dis- 
charge of a yet holier trust, seeks to justify the ways 
of God to men. The courses of the stars are not 
hidden from him, nor the grateful influences of the 
heavens in their appointed seasons ; and shall he not, 
as he witnesses them, acquaint himself with those 
laws by which science has removed from them every 
vestige of superstition and of fear, and made them to 
lay open bright celestial paths, by which we may ad- 
vance farther and farther into regions that display the 
wonders of an infinite creation ? Organic life is ever 
before him, in all its countless forms, from his own 
wonderful structure, through successive varieties of 
intelligent being, down to the plants that ofttimes 
seem almost to unite with it. Even the rude masses 



24 ADDRESS. 

of unorganized matter offer their sermon, not alone to 
the pensive enthusiast who pores upon them, exempt 
from public haunt, but to every one to whose involun- 
tary notice, the fragments of rocks, scattered across his 
path, disclose the secrets of creation and the evidences 
of endless forms of animated existence. And is it 
possible for him who finds these heavens above and 
far beyond him, and around him this wonderful world 
alike breathing and inanimate — all pressing themselves 
upon his notice -, becoming, whatever his occupations 
may be, the objects of his observation; of necessity 
engaging his reflections and even affecting the actions 
of his life — is it possible, that he should not desire and 
seek to imbue his mind with the laws and the truths 
in regard to them which science has collected and 
arranged ? Will the chosen end of his efforts be better 
reached by indulging a sullen ignorance in regard to 
them ? Or will he not rather confess that the rills of 
knowledge, gathered from all her countless springs, 
serve but to fertilize, for every purpose, the intellect 
over which they flow ? 

And if this be so in regard to those studies which 
fill the mind, at the outset of life, with the treasures 
of classical learning and varied instruction in diver- 
sified science; how much more has the whole of its 
subsequent course given us occasion gratefully to recur 
to those early teachings, by which we were made to 
understand and love the political institutions of our 
country, as best fitted to promote the social happiness 



ADDRESS. 25 

of our fellow-creatures ; and those also — yet more im- 
portant — which planted and confirmed in our hearts, 
never to be shaken, the principles of religious truth ? 

Who is there who has not rejoiced that, when he 
came into the intercourse of his fellow-beings, he was 
already trained to perform his duties towards them ; 
and had learned, by reason and study, justly to appre- 
ciate that form of government under which we live, 
and which we are required to protect and to obey. 
His patriotism, so planted, has not sprung from a 
devotion that is indiscriminate and servile; it is not 
to be shaken by every gale with which delusive theory, 
or selfish ambition, or ungenerous rivalry, or blind 
enthusiasm may assail it ; nor will it be weakened by 
the timid misgivings that would shrink before insolent 
detraction, or suffer principle, truth and progress to be 
trampled beneath the slow and heavy footsteps of mis- 
applied example or antiquated authority. While the 
demands of active life engage his energies and occupy 
his time, he yet knows, and feels, and exercises his 
rights and duties as a citizen. 

So trained, he calmly and confidently upholds in 
their full scope and spirit, the adopted institutions of 
his country, firmly assured that they best recognize 
and protect the rights and freedom of men. With 
the great statesman, who ever aimed to administer 
them in the course pointed out by enlightened reason 
and comprehensive philanthropy, he has learned to 
believe that government to be the world's best hope 



26 ADDRESS. 

in which man is trusted with the government of him- 
self; which protects the equal rights of every one, of 
whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; 
accords to him public honors and confidence from 
his actions and not his birth ; leaves him free to regu- 
late his own pursuits of industry and improvement ; 
watches, with a jealous care, the right of election by 
the people and acquiesces in the majority of their suf- 
frages; arraigns abuses at the bar of public reason; 
and guards the freedom of the person and the press — 
thus leading a people to that state of peace, liberty 
and safety from which false political institutions have 
so often, and, alas ! do still, so generally exclude them ; 
but which we may, with him, hope and believe will 
yet come, through social and political progress, "to 
some parts of the world sooner, to others later, but 
finally to all." 

And taught to look even beyond these principles, 
which are the just elements of every social compact, 
to those peculiar relations and ties which the circum- 
stances of our own country have fortunately created, 
he has learned to regard and feel himself to be one 
of a brotherhood united together by a bond which it 
is his duty and happiness to preserve in a just, frater- 
nal and forbearing spirit. So taught, he cherishes in 
the recesses of his heart, the admonitions of him whose 
councils he remembers with deepest reverence and con- 
fidence ; and, in all the business and active turmoil of 
his life, " the disinterested warning of a parting friend," 



ADDRESS. 27 

which was planted in his youthful breast, is never ab- 
sent from his memory. It has come to be, not a warn- 
ing, but a sacred injunction "to cherish a cordial, 
habitual and immovable attachment to our national 
union j to accustom ourselves to think and speak of it 
as a palladium of our political safety and prosperity; 
to watch for its preservation with a jealous anxiety; 
to discountenance whatever may suggest even a sus- 
picion that it can in any event be abandoned; and 
indignantly to frown on the first dawning of every 
attempt to alienate any portion of our country from 
the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link 
together its various parts." From his mind nothing 
can obliterate the deeply seated conviction, that the 
Union, which circumstances apparently fortuitous con- 
tributed to produce, has been given to us as an ark of 
safety over which ministering angels watch with out- 
spread wings and guard from unholy violence. He 
rejoices to behold that form and those principles of 
government which best protect the rights and promote 
the happiness of man, spreading wider and wider by 
its operation and influence ; to witness the guarded in- 
tercourse of strangers silently changed into the harmony 
and friendly association of brethren and children ; and 
to believe, and indeed the proof is before his eyes, that 
there is a federative principle which may exist in the 
political relations of our race, accordant with the teach- 
ings of Christian love, so as to bring wide-spread socie- 
ties of man together, by a tie closer than that of cold 



28 ADDKESS. 

and distrustful alliance. And, looking back through 
the progress and events of the last sixty years, at 
practical results of that federative principle, so suc- 
cessful and beneficent, he confidently hopes that the 
world may yet see communities, whose limits none can 
foretell, collected together beneath the protection of a 
common and glorious banner, on which may be inscribed 
in letters of light, "peace and good-will" among nations 
as well as men — 

See to the north where keener spangles shine, 
Where spices smoke beneath the burning line. 
Earth's wide extremes, that fostering flag display'd, 
And all the nations cover'd by its shade. 

And if it has been a source of confidence and consola- 
tion, through succeeding life, that we were thus early 
trained in our sympathies and our duties towards our 
fellow creatures and our country, so that subsequent 
events could neither impair them, nor were needed to 
confirm them, well may we recur with emotions still 
more grateful to our first and deep impressions of 
religious truth. Ah ! who is there, however ambitious 
or successful he may have been, who does not a thou- 
sand times rejoice that the lessons of youth impressed 
irrevocably upon his mind and his heart, a confident 
belief in the existence of the divine Creator, a pro- 
found and grateful sense of his attributes, a devout and 
anxious reverence for his laws ; so that, in the glowing 
language of Bacon, " human things have been unable 



ADDRESS. 29 

to prejudice such as are divine; nor, from the unlocking 
of the gates of sense, and the kindUng of a greater 
natural light, has any thing of incredulity or intel- 
lectual night arisen in our minds, towards the divine 
oracles." What anticipations, nay what reality, of 
success, which an undivided devotion to the chosen 
objects of worldly interest or ambition might have 
seemed to promise, could compensate for that firm and 
resolute belief which has been fixed, by early convic- 
tion, in the existence, power and mercy of the great 
Creator. How often would the subtle ingenuity of ill- 
directed intellect, the reckless impulses of passion, the 
weak misgivings of ignorance, working upon a mind 
only nurtured and early turned to the keen pursuit of 
some single end of worldly success, combine to sever 
the golden chain which binds the intellect and the heart 
of every being to the throne of God. With what light 
and cheerful steps does he walk along the devious 
paths of life, who doubts not that they lead him onward 
to a brighter world ; who knows that all seeming acci- 
dents are directed by a superior intelligence which he 
cannot see; that virtue has its sure and eternal re- 
ward ; that the sufferings and sorrows of the good are 
not without a certain and abundant recompense; and 
that to him a heavenly revelation has assured that 
endless day, which the Roman poet only ventured, in 
his loftiest strains, vaguely to anticipate, when, in the 
circle of completed time, every stain of human error 



30 ADDRESS. 

shall be washed away, and a pure and ethereal spirit 
shall warm and animate a prolonged existence ; 

Donee longa dies, perfecto temjDoris orbe, 
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit 
^therium sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem. 

If I have thus recurred to and largely dwelt upon 
that broader scope of study and acquisition which I 
believe it to be the appropriate function of collegiate 
instruction to supply; if I desire to see the aspirations 
and exertions of youth lured and guided into the 
widest paths of inquiry ; if I ask that busy life shall 
be begun with minds over which letters and science 
and social, political and religious truth have all com- 
bined to cast their blended and enduring influence, it 
is because I feel the strong conviction that we thus 
most surely open the way to happiness and usefulness. 
I am not, at the same time, insensible that in such 
opinions I may differ from many — to whose wisdom 
and judgment I might well defer — who shrink from a 
system of instruction so diversified and general, and 
would aim to limit and contract within a range more 
narrow the early exertions of the intellect. It seems 
to me, however, that if those social institutions are the 
best which tend to diminish, as much as may be, among 
the industrious and the good, inequalities that result 
from accident or circumstances not dependent on 
themselves ; which open to them all the wide arena 
where none are content to recognize a forced inferiority 



ADDRESS. 31 

of position ; where fortune and honors are to be sought 
for, in every pursuit, by superiority among those whose 
rights and opportunities to attain them are the same, 
and where they are to be won from the general and 
favoring judgment of the whole community of which 
we form a part — not from the patronage of a govern- 
ment or the assistance or influence of classes enabled 
to bestow them by reason of peculiar privileges, power or 
wealth; if such institutions are, as we believe them 
to be, the best — then is it essential to seek to extend 
to every one that aid towards his industry and success, 
which may arise from the fullest cultivation of his in- 
tellect and his heart; and, by the same means, elevate 
and place upon a foundation the most liberal, that 
enlightened judgment of the whole community which 
is so directly to affect the welfare of all who form a 
part of it. Education is not then a mere tool to further 
the skill of the craftsman — a mere handmaid to hang 
upon the steps of limited individual effort; it becomes 
the most powerful of agents in the operation and pro- 
gress of those social 23rinciples which are the most just, 
enlightened, generous and beneficent ; it is a spirit that 
beyond all others animates, fosters, protects and in- 
creases the industry, integrity and intelligence which 
those principles are calculated to develop ; it is a 
weight that adjusts with the least possible error, the 
scale by which their merit, success and influence are 
decided and rewarded. 

Can we doubt that we owe our own wonderful 



32 ADDRESS. 

progress and happiness to institutions such as these, 
united with a wide spread system of liberal education ? 
Without such institutions, comparatively small must 
be the benefit of general education, as an element of 
social and political prosperity. It would end with the 
advantage it might immediately confer on classes or 
individuals who enjoy it ; but the sublime agency, by 
which it directly affects and promotes the movement 
and progress of the whole community, would not be 
fulfilled. And, on the other hand, unless a widely 
diffused cultivation of general intelligence were united 
with such institutions — desiring and demanding, as 
they do, the common participation of us all, to protect 
and further them in their true spirit — it is not possible 
that they could have advanced so steadily onward, 
producing results so accordant with the hopes and 
wishes of every friend of man. Other regions have 
been blessed with skies and climates as genial as our 
own ; earth has offered to toiling industry, soils not 
less prolific ; man has elsewhere displayed an indi- 
vidual energy, as well directed and as various ; the 
great principles of civil and religious freedom have 
been recognized and contended for by other nations 
and races, as fearlessly and zealously as by ourselves — 
and, indeed, under circumstances more adverse, and 
amid trials more severe ; but for our happy country 
has been reserved the blended influence of a self- 
government the most extended and free, directly and 
practically conducted by men among whom education 



ADDKESS. 83 

has been most widely diffused ; and it is this cause, not 
cUmate, or soil, or race, that has made us what we are. 
It is the blessing of institutions that have long brought 
to our whole people, with an equal hand, the right and 
duty of self-government, combined with the opportuni- 
ties, in general largely profited by, of widely diffused 
information and knowledge, in morals, politics and 
religion. 

It lately happened to me to stand on the farther 
shores of Lake Michigan, deemed but a few years ago 
so distant, and scarcely known to us but by narratives 
of early and undaunted missionaries, or by tales of tra- 
vellers and traders, who had venturously embarked on 
its lonely and stormy waters, or penetrated among the 
red men that wandered unmolested over silent and 
interminable prairies, where a thick and flowery herb- 
age hardly yielded to their footsteps. As I looked 
over the wide expanse of waters — far as the eye could 
reach — the schooner's white sail and the steamer's 
ceaseless wheel were spreading new life upon the 
waves. As I turned to the prairie and the rolling 
hills, agriculture was every where to be seen, running 
its long furrow through the virgin sod, till distance 
hid it from the view; cities, suddenly sprung into ex- 
istence, were glittering in the cloudless skies ; all 
around me were the hum of the mill, and the smoking 
turret of the factory ; street beyond street was extend- 
ing, farther and farther, the evidences of commerce 
and prosperous industry ; and conspicuous, far above 
L.e?C. ^ 



34 ADDRESS. 

all, and seeming to animate and control the exhilarat- 
ing scene, churches and school-houses rose on every 
side, in number and size apparently, as yet, superfluous. 
And who are those — strangers in costume, in appear- 
ance, often in language — adding, at every moment, 
their numbers to this crowd? They are emigrants 
from old settled regions beyond the ocean, voluntarily 
hastening to a country and habits connected by no 
associations with the land of their birth ; yet they are 
not melancholy exiles sadly deserting or driven from 
their homes; they are joyous and happy — seeking, like 
the patriarchs of old, a land of promise, where their 
honest toil will be rewarded by prosperity that will not 
wither beneath the oppression of institutions in which 
they have no part ; where the religious faith, which 
their conscience teaches and approves, will neither 
be subjected to civil control, nor to the arbitrary in- 
terference or privileges of some predominant church ; 
and where their children may be so nurtured as early 
to learn, and be made fit to exercise, in their fullest 
scope, the rights of a citizen. Could I fail to see and 
to confess that the magic powers by which changes 
and effects so wonderful could be produced, were the 
universal ballot-box, the voluntary church, and the 
public school, uniting together to secure to every man, 
and enabling him wisely to assert, his equal and just 
position ; to participate in the functions of government, 
limited and general ; and to exert the power which, 
in a government so constituted, labor, virtue, and en- 



ADDRESS. 85 

terprise confer? And, as my imagination and thought 
carried me even beyond these scenes, so grateful and 
inspiring, I seemed to behold, in the far distant vista, 
similar communities every where extending ; nor could 
I forget that, as they were to spread farther and 
farther into the remotest prairies, there was a pillar of 
light which would always go before their path — that 
wherever they should rest, a provident forecast had 
already prepared the spot,' in w^hich the school-house 
and the college were to connect, with the form and 
exercise of government, the dissemination and in- 
fluence of social, political, and religious truth. 

If we love the institutions of our country, as which 
of us does not; if we believe them, indeed, to be the 
w^orld's best hope ; if we are to preserve, nay, to 
enlarge them, in their true spirit, as an example 
and alluring beacon to hopeful and trusting men, 
throughout the world; then must we all — union, 
and states, and cities, and individuals — strive to 
further the progress, in every form, of general and 
enlightened education. Above all, when we behold 
the school-house and the college travelling onwards, 
and preceding the march of industrious enterprise ; 
when we see them every where planted by hands 
withdrawn, not without difficulty, from the pressing 
exigencies of frontier life; when we recognize, at 
every moment, the abundant reward they have con- 
ferred; then, indeed, must those portions of our 
common country, to which time, and accumulated 



36 ADDRESS. 

population and resources have brought far ampler 
means, apply themselves, with more than zeal, to 
the discharge of this, the first duty which they owe 
to the age in which we live, and to that beneficent 
Providence which has conferred such blessings, not 
for themselves alone, but that they may so appre- 
ciate and use them, as to further the common wel- 
fare of all our race. 

Is it vain to believe, that by our own community 
this will be joyfully and generously done ? Nay, 
that from these halls, where we are now assembled, 
enlightened intelligence shall always emanate, not 
less widely or successfully than it has spread from 
seats the most chosen of learning and of science. 
Indeed, this, our duty, is imposed upon us in a 
double trust — imposed, as it is hallowed, by patriots 
the most illustrious in the annals of Pennsylvania 
— her Penn and her Franklin. If we honor that 
name which, first in the legislation of mankind, was 
affixed to the glorious statutes that combined, in the 
foundation of a State, universal suffrage, unrestrained 
right of religious belief, abolition of privileges of 
birth in property and in government, the exercise 
of the popular will in the selection of officers civil 
and judicial, and, indeed, the careful protection of 
every political and social right; do not let us forget 
that it was also affixed to the charter of a public 
seminary. Before the primeval forests were cleared 
from the site of Philadelphia, a school-house of rude 



ADDRESS. 37 

logs of pine and cedar was already sheltered by their 
boughs. If, indeed, our Commonwealth does regard 
her founder — to advert to the language of his pre- 
judiced and querulous historian — "with a reverence 
similar to that which the Romans felt for Quirinus ;" 
it may well lead us to recall an incident by which 
that reverence was shown. When, after the lapse 
of centuries, the little village on the Tiber had be- 
come the mistress of the world, the straw-roofed 
cottage of Romulus was still proudly and piously 
preserved, beside the towering and golden Capitol, 
and in the midst of temples, and arches, and columns, 
the trophies of her boundless empire. If our little 
school-house of logs exists not now, yet not less well 
may our reverence be shown for the founder of our 
republic, if the spot where in his day it stood, shall 
be — as it needs but ourselves to make it — a home 
of letters, and a centre from which education and 
intelligence shall diffuse their happiest influence. 
Nor let us less remember that, at a later day, he 
whom, by common consent, we place, in the history 
of our commonwealth, second alone to Penn, whose 
philanthropy, wisdom, energy and public spirit, so 
many of our institutions record, labored with peculiar 
zeal to establish this, our College ; and when at last 
the grateful task was accomplished, proclaimed in 
his letters, page after page, his anxious interest for 
its progress, his confident hope of its continued in- 
crease and success. 



38 ADDRESS. 

How shall we answer to the memories of these men, 
so illustrious, if, after so many years gone by, the trust, 
thus left to us by them, has not been faithfully dis- 
charged ? If, while population, and commerce, and 
wealth, and prosperity have increased, far beyond all 
that their expectations could foresee; and our city 
has gained a merited fame for works of charity and 
domestic usefulness, it presents not a College that 
might answer to the hopes of Franklin and of Penn ? 
What can be more honorable than to follow in their 
footsteps? What is more to be coveted than praise 
which is won by efforts to render such an institution 
worthy of its founders — worthy of the city it might 
adorn, and the renown it might readily reach. These 
efforts, it is true, may require from those of us who 
are not without opportunity to make them, some of 
that devotion — nay, even some of that personal labor 
and exertion, which benefactors like Penn and 
Franklin were always ready and happy to bestow 
on works of public usefulness; but would they not 
give to such devotion and zeal their abundant reward, 
alike in the distinction brought to our city, and in 
the consciousness of so great a benefit conferred on 
a community of which we are a part? Nor is this 
all. To such exertions, those around us are sure 
willingly to respond. Generously will they second, 
and abundantly w^ill they honor efforts directed to 
objects so disinterested, attractive and beneficent. 



ADDRESS. 39 

Do we not see college after college winning envied 
distinction, not alone in states long settled, but in 
those that are the growth of yesterday ? Do we not 
witness their names, their schools, their discoveries, 
and the zeal of those connected with them, already 
made conspicuous in the ranks of letters and science ? 
Are they not hailed with favoring notice among the 
learned and observant of other countries, as well as 
our own ? And does not the anxious question press 
upon our thoughts — what is to be the station of our 
own University among them ? The answer is at 
hand. If it is true to the opportunities it possesses, 
to its founders, and to the community of which 
it should be the pride ; if its own sons, and those 
intrusted with its care, are faithful to their mission, 
then will it be surpassed by none in usefulness and 
fame. 

No ! when science and letters, and the cause of 
universal truth are pressing onward, as they now are, 
with all the ardor of our age, our college must not be 
forgetful of its noble origin ; it must not be wanting in 
the honorable contest; 

Non Memmi clara propago, 
Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti. 

When all around us, astronomy is disclosing new 
secrets of the universe, and electricity is speaking from 
pole to pole in the language of light, surely we will 
not let it be forgotten that this is the college of Rit- 



40 ADDRESS. 

tenhouse and Franklin. When trouble shall gather 
around the institutions of our country — when the 
sacred rights of man shall be endangered, or the 
brightness of our fraternal bond is sought to be 
tarnished — surely bold and conspicuous champions will 
be found in the halls once governed and protected by 
Morris and Hopkinson ; by IngersoU and Clymer — 
names proudly enrolled on the two great charters of 
American liberty and union. And if, amid the wild, 
and fanciful, and dreamy speculations of these our 
days, a voice is needed to call us to the plain and 
simple lessons of virtue and revealed religion, is there 
a spot whence it can better issue than that where the 
venerable form of the pure and unaffected minister of 
God, who fearlessly invoked his blessing, day by day, 
on the struggling government of our country, has been 
so often present, in modest dignity, illustrating in all 
his actions, as far as erring man may do, the precepts 
which he taught? 

Associates ! Old companions and friends ! Children 
of this our beloved college ! I know that you will not 
be wanting to fulfil your part, in a mission so ac- 
ceptable to you ; that to further it, your aid will be 
and is most gladly offered ; that to such a call you 
will never be deaf; and that, in the midst of private 
cares and occupations, there is not one of you, who 
will not be ready, in the spirit of Trebonius, to ex- 
claim : " In an effort so worthy, I will be there !" 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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